I'd have been a filmmaker or a cartoonist or something else which extended from the visual arts into the making of narratives if I hadn't been able to shift into fiction.
Jonathan LethemI definitely care about how the concept of New York punk was constructed, and why it mattered. But I wasn't gonna doร that. Partly because I'm not a great journalist...
Jonathan LethemWhen I write lyrics, I really do go into an automatic folk appropriation mode... I see the vernacular register of 20th century song as being a bunch of forms to adapt and reconfigure.
Jonathan LethemHow often had that hydrant even been opened? Did you jet water through a car window, what, twice at best? Summer burned just a few afternoons long, in the end. As for flying, Dose never even glanced at the sky. Flying was a summer within a summer, a whim. So why think of it at all?
Jonathan LethemMusic still sort of hangs up there in the sky for me as this thing that moves me so much, but I can't really make it. It's like a car I can't drive.
Jonathan LethemListen to me. Iโm shy. Iโm not stupid. I canโt meet peopleโs eyes. I donโt know if you understand what thatโs like. Thereโs a whole world going on around me, Iโm aware of that. Itโs not because I donโt want to look at you, Lucinda. Itโs that I donโt want to be seen.
Jonathan Lethem